Two Republican politicians from Louisiana took the
initiative and confessed Thursday that their names are on a list of
clients for the cheating Web site Ashley Madison. But both were
quick to say that while they know what people might be thinking, it
wasn’t that, the old “I can explain everything” line.

(Related) Ah, the Class Actions begin. (For a
minute there I thought the lawyers had been “customers.”

The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Eliot
Shore, a disabled widower in Ottawa, who after 30 years of marriage
lost his wife to breast cancer. He joined Ashley Madison for a short
time seeking companionship, but never met anyone online.

The data breach includes users’
personal names, e-mails, home addresses and profile information for
public viewing.

Charney said since the first information
dump on Tuesday, more than 50 people — one-third of which are women
— approached the lawyers — and more should come forward, he said.

“It seems massive in some respects, but for us,
it’s a classic privacy breach case where you’ve got a number of
people who are similarly situated, who the corporation made the same
promises to, in terms of confidentiality and ... their personal
information disclosed to the public at large.”

Google has been ordered to remove nine links to
news stories by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
under the "right to be forgotten".

… In a statement, the ICO revealed that Google
had refused to remove the links when asked by the complainant, which
is why officials are now stepping in.

Being able to access the links by searching for
the complainant by name constitutes a breach of the Data Protection
Act, according to the ICO.

… Dr Walden added that as the complexity of
removal requests grows, it's possible that search engines like Google
may become less willing to challenge them.

"In
five years' time perhaps Google will say, 'It's not worth the hassle,
let's take down more stuff, let's not spend as much time evaluating
the case,' - they obviously have to employ people for this," he
said.

The personnel vetting company that screened
government leaker Edward Snowden and Washington Navy Yard shooter
Aaron Alexis has agreed to give up $30 million to settle federal
fraud charges.

In order to pay the settlement, the Justice
Department announced on Wednesday that United States Investigations
Services (USIS) — the largest private background check firm used by
the government, based in Falls Church, Va. — has agreed to forgo
payments that it was otherwise owed by the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM).

According to federal law enforcement officials,
USIS officials carried out a plot to “flush” or “dump”
individual cases that they deemed to be low-level in order to meet
internal goals.

Very curious to see how quickly this is adopted
and what difference it makes.

Yelp
Official Blog: “We are excited to announce that Yelp has
concluded an agreement
with the federal government that will allow federal agencies and
offices to claim their Yelp pages, read and respond to reviews, and
incorporate that feedback into service improvements. We encourage
Yelpers to review any of the thousands of agency field offices, TSA
checkpoints, national
parks, Social
Security Administration offices, landmarks and other places
already listed on Yelp if you have good or bad feedback to share
about your experiences. Not only is it helpful to others who are
looking for information on these services, but you can actually make
an impact by sharing your feedback directly with the source. It’s
clear Washington is eager to engage with people directly through
social media. Earlier this year a group of 46 lawmakers called for
the creation of a “Yelp
for Government” in order to boost transparency and
accountability, and Representative Ron Kind reiterated this call in a
letter
to the General Services Administration (GSA). Luckily for them,
there’s no need to create a new platform now that government
agencies can
engage directly on Yelp. As this agreement is fully implemented
in the weeks and months ahead, we’re excited to help the federal
government more directly interact with and respond to the needs of
citizens and to further empower the millions of Americans who use
Yelp every day. In addition to working with the federal government,
last week we announced our our partnership
with ProPublica to incorporate health care statistics and
consumer opinion survey data onto the Yelp business pages of more
than 25,000 medical treatment facilities. We’ve also partnered
with local governments in expanding the LIVES
open data standard to show restaurant health scores on Yelp. All
of these things fall under Yelp’s Consumer Protection Initiative, a
concerted effort to empower and protect consumers on our site. We’re
constantly looking for new ways to improve our user experience, so if
you have other ideas for this initiative or feedback on efforts Yelp
currently has underway, including this new agreement with the federal
government, please share it here.”

So... Talking favorably about a Copyright
infringer can get you arrested?

Police in Denmark have arrested the alleged
operators of two Popcorn Time guide websites. The domains of both
operations have also been seized by the authorities. The case is
controversial in that both sites were Popcorn Time information
resources and neither
linked to copyright-infringing material.

… Popcorn Time is increasingly attracting the
attention of copyright holders, anti-piracy groups and law
enforcement agencies.

While neither of the main forks have yet been
targeted, others around them are feeling the heat. In fact, the
latest news coming out of Denmark suggests that the authorities are
even prepared to hit those barely on the perimeter.

… While arrests of file-sharers and those
running sites that closely facilitate infringement are nothing new,
this week’s arrests appear to go way beyond anything seen before.
The two men are not connected to the development of Popcorn Time and
have not been offering copyrighted content for download.

Both sites were information resources, offering
recent news on Popcorn Time related developments, guides, FAQ
sections and tips on how to use the software.

There is no question that social media
privacy issues now permeate the workplace. In an attempt to provide
further guidance and regulation in this area, since April 2012, a
growing number of state legislatures in the United States have passed
various forms of social media privacy legislation. In fact, to date,
nearly all state legislatures, as well as the United States Congress,
have considered or are considering some kind of social media privacy
legislation.

The precise impact that these new social
media privacy laws have on existing trade secret law is still very
much in its infancy. Compounding matters, the plain language of
several recently enacted privacy laws directly conflicts with
judicial decisions regarding “company vs. employee” ownership of
social media content that may otherwise constitute protectable trade
secrets, including contact lists and business relationships.
Moreover, very few court decisions have yet to interpret any of the
new social media privacy laws.

WeChat dominates China with its messaging hub that
lets you shop, call a taxi, and pay bills — all from one app. Now,
mobile search startup Vurb
wants to bring the monolithic app style to the United States with the
help of Tencent, WeChat’s developer which has secretly been an
investor in Vurb’s $10 million of funding.

Vurb’s founder Bobby Lo tells me that’s the
direction his app is going. Eventually, businesses could build
official accounts into Vurb so people could order their movie
tickets, book reservations, and more without leaving the app.

Twenty years ago, tech experts urged small
businesses to get on the World Wide Web or die. Perhaps they
overstated things a bit, but it certainly held true for many
industries. Now the call is to get ready for the
Internet of Things (IoT) or face extinction. Again, it
may not apply to all fields, but it certainly does apply to many—and
probably more than you think.

Software is getting smart. It’s a slow, uneven
process — but it’s also seemingly unstoppable. One by one, the
hard problems of machine
learning are falling to powerful new theoretical tools, letting
us build software that can do some truly impressive things.

Some applications, like self-driving cars, are a
few years off. What you may not realize, though, is that machine
learning is already all around you, and it can exert a surprising
degree of influence over your life. Don’t believe me? You might
be surprised.

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.